After being increasingly frustrated with the existing character generator programs and their lack of easy utility to Conan RPG, I set about building my own in MS Excel 2000. Spending more hours on this than I care to remember (or am willing to admit to) it is nearly finished.

I would like to make this labour of love available to all for free but need to know what procedures I need to go through so that I don't upset anyone at Mongoose re-copyright issues.

It is about 1 MB unzipped and requires Microsoft Excel 2000. It uses three macros to load list options, assign racial features and assign class features but everything else is contained within the spreadsheet.

Aside from the mechanical crunchy bits I have been careful not to include any additional descriptive text and to refer to the Conan RPG rulebook wherever possible.

Would the people at Mongoose mind if I e-mailed the spreadsheet directly to them for comment? I definitely don't have any commercial interest in this whatsoever (apart from the time saved to game with my friends).

A few notes:
I created a South Islander who has 2 levels of Barbarian and 4 levels of Pirate.

On the User Sheet:

It gave me 5 feats, but I think I should only have 4. Barbarian and Pirate are each favoured classes, but they don't each give a bonus at their first level. Figured that out myself - the combined Barbarian/Pirate levels reached 5th.

It would be nice if you only recorded what you rolled for hit points, and then let the sheet add the Constitution modifier. That would make it easier if you keep updating the same sheet as a character gains levels. You could even fill in the first level automatically, since you ask for the starting class.

Missing religion. +2 to Will Saves can be pretty important

On the Character Sheet:

It writes that I have a +1 to hit with spears, but it doesn't include that under my War Spear's "Attack Mod" (a very minor quibble).

I gave him a Stygian bow, and apparently I have a -4 Attack Bonus with it even though I have Versatility.

A column with the Total Attack Bonus of each weapon would be nice. (Right now it only includes Weapon Focus, Unfamiliarity and maybe others)

Under Class Abilities, I have "Sneak Attack (+1d6/+1d8)", like a thief. It may be useful to keep track of Pirate and Thief sneak attack bonuses seperately, so multiclass Thief/Pirates know how many d8s and how many d6s to roll when using their favoured weapon.

Dodge and Parry totals shouldn't have pluses prefixing them.

I'd like to add that this is a great tool as-is. Just because I can find things to nitpick doesn't mean it isn't complete or I won't use it.

While you are there check out the other great stuff especially the conversion notes for d20 Ancient Kingdoms: Mesopotamia for Conan RPG. The adventure is a very cool, pulp fiction scenario involving tombs, cults, desert tribes and lost cities. Ideal for Conan really.

Please post any feedback on the spreadsheet on this thread and I'll try and make changes / updates on a regular basis.

Just to let you know that Version 1.3 of the PC generator has been posted to the Yahoo Groups File area. I've now corrected most of the errors reported to me in the past week or so.

The major enhancement in this version is that the user now specifies class and ability score increases on a character level basis. This allows more accurate calculation of skill points and now hit points too.

Some you are reporting that the hit point calculations don't work - that is, the NAME! error appears in the cell after the first character level.

The error occurs because you have not installed the Data Analysis Pak of
additional Excel functions that come with the basic Excel 97 / 2000 installation but aren't switched on yet. It is trying to call the RANDBETWEEN() function but can't find it in your Excel library.

It is easily fixed.

Open Excel. Select Tools from the top menu and then Add Ins ... option.

From the dialog box check the "Analysis Toolpak" and "Analysis Toolpak -
VBA" options and click ok. Excel should install them automatically from its
system directory but you may need the installation disk. I don't know why
Excel doesn't install these automatically at the start because there are a
lot of useful functions in there.